


in so many words

by dieofthatroar



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Communication, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person, References to Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, reference to past suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-23 08:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23842126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dieofthatroar/pseuds/dieofthatroar
Summary: “I didn’t tell anyone. Until now. Literally.”Was Phil included in that statement? Perhaps, both yes, and no. There are ways of telling the truth without using the same words.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 72





	in so many words

Phil is something you’ve never experienced before. He makes you want to tell stories. He makes you feel like there is someone in the world who wants to listen. He asks questions and you answer, and most of the time, they are not lies. Until they are.

It’s scary how easy it is, not to lie. How easy it would be to slip up and say too much and make all this fall apart. Sometimes, you just catch yourself on a word and swallow it back. And sometimes, it’s too late.

* * *

**2009**

In the beginning, it doesn’t feel real. The laughter through static and the feeling that you aren’t alone. Because this is _the_ Amazingphil. And he’s talking to you as if you’re some sort of equal. It’s bants and games and being too bold because there’s hundreds of kilometers and many years of experience between the two of you that no words could ever breach. But you try. You try far into the night when the words slip through your lips like alcohol—too easy, before the burn.

This is when you could have said it. In one of these worlds, one of these timelines, you do. Right then, in the beginning, before anything is real. It’s all phantom touches across phone lines and imagined futures, so why not this secret too? Tuck it into the bunch and hand it over like all the rest, and hope that Phil doesn’t notice the way it pricks a little more than the others. Doesn’t notice the residue of failure and shame that marks that one tale among the many.

“Ha, is that all?” you say, fatigue coating your words. It is well past midnight and the covers of your bed are bunched around you. The webcam only catches the side of your face and some of your god-awful messy hair. “Could have used you around back when I was in school. Maybe then I wouldn’t have wanted to die so much.” It’s casual. Easy to write off as a joke, overly dramatic Dan strikes again. _God, just kill me now,_ or, _I was so embarrassed I just wanted to die._ You think it’s that easy, that simple, but you still don’t look at the camera to see Phil’s reaction because somehow this time there was more truth in it. Somehow, this time, you forgot to smile as you said it.

Did he notice?

You don’t know. You never looked and you just kept talking. Talking and talking to fill the negative space between you and the first person who could have understood what you meant.

**2010**

Or, it could have happened like this:

It’s Phil’s first time in Wokingham and it’s both the best thing in the world and the worst. It’s safety in unsafe places, or maybe it’s the other way around. You can never tell, because both feelings are mixed and mingling and it makes you a bit nauseous, honestly. Either way, you’re dizzy when you lead him into your room for the first time and you can blame it on that. Or, the time of day. Or, the way your dad looked at you yesterday—like you were nothing at all.

Whatever it is, you want to remind yourself that you are _something,_ because the opposite of that is gone and at the very least, you feel alive. Alive between these brown walls and small spaces and dreams that didn’t fit.

The thing is, you’re convinced that if you don’t say something, the walls will talk anyway. They’ll spill your secrets because they’ve seen too much of you to hold back. There isn’t space for them to keep any more—with Phil here, something has to give. One secret in (the way Phil kisses you against the closed door), then another pops out (your ex never kissed you like that). Just like that. Phil needs to know what he's getting himself into, so there's still time to get himself out. 

So you give him a tour _. There’s the TV where I play video games when I’m not talking to you. There’s my computer, looks different from the other side, huh? There’s the closet full of clothes I don’t want to wear anymore, and there’s the bed where I wank to your voice, but you already knew that. There are the walls, ugly stupid walls, that watched me swallow pills when I didn’t know you yet, and I haven’t yet been fully convinced that the outcome was favorable._

Phil looks at you and nods like he understands, but he doesn’t. Not really. Maybe he just doesn’t believe you, not in that way at least. But he brings you into his arms and tells you that he loves you and that you’ll leave this place soon. That you two have plans that could never fit into this place anyway. It was all growing pains.

Did you have to say it the way you did? Yes, because if you didn’t say it like that you’d never say anything at all and at least this gives Phil the chance to bail like everyone else. Tell you that you’re on your own.

The walls would have talked anyway.

You’re convinced.

**2011**

If it didn’t happen like that, it would have happened another way. Another time. Maybe a year or two later, when it feels as if you’ve escaped. When you think the monster under your bed, lying in wait, cannot catch you anymore.

There’s some sort of settling in your heart when you move to Manchester. Like you are finally able to move on. That the kids who threw insults at you without knowing their meaning were just that—kids. Like you were, too. You made brash decisions on impulse and a poor grasp of the meaning of forever. Not like you have now. Forever to you is less a punishment and more a promise between freshly washed sheets and no need to fear the sunrise. Phil is forever and he has to know that. You have to tell him that.

“You saved me, you know that?” you say when you stay over another night in his room. You’re on the bed, he’s on the floor, and you’re both just bumbling about online. Together and not. Because now that you have forever, every moment doesn’t have the weight that it did when all you had was today. That in itself is more freeing than you’d expected. Being able to do this—just exist—without an expiration date.

“Hm?” Phil says. He glances up from his screen.

“You saved me,” you say again because even if it’s hard, you don’t want to hide that truth from him. He deserves to know exactly what he means to you.

“From the laundry at Uni? Or from finishing your essay?” Phil laughs.

“No,” you say. Phil must hear the urgency in your voice because his smile vanishes and he sits up. “From—I guess from me? You saved me from me.”

“I don’t think you’re too bad,” Phil says, more cautiously now, but still lighthearted. There’s a smile on his face, lips telling you that the world is not so scary if he’s here next to you. “I don’t need to be saved from you.”

“Because I don’t hate you, you dummy,” you say, knowing what the implication is there. “You saved me because I—well, I didn’t know what forever meant. I thought it’d be better if I were dead instead of a forever of what it was like back home. But we have a different forever, don’t we?”

Phil puts down his computer and joins you on the bed. He takes your hand in his and his fingers whisper of yours. “Of course we do,” he says.

And you spend the rest of the night in a perfect sort of silence.

**2012**

That’s how it could have gone if it had gone well. If it had been happiness and light that teased the words from where they were stuck in your chest rather than hate.

But what if it didn’t? What if those secrets were used as weapons like they were maybe meant to be? They were crafted from pain, were they not? Therefore they had to be used the same. They could draw blood with the points of meanings—some letters are so sharp they could almost do it alone. _K,_ you think. _Kiss_ and _Kill_ are not so far apart.

Phil’s been up all night, again, trying to undo the damage that has already been done. Because even a video doesn’t expose them, a picture may. Or something he says in passing. Or just the way he looks—god, they must all already know. They already know and there’s no deleting knowledge. But Phil’s been up all night and all you’ve been doing is trying to block out the terror of the world. Doing nothing to help. Being useless, as usual. 

“Again?” Phil says. Usually, he’s good. Usually, when you can’t get your legs to move and the world becomes gray, he is the first light that you allow in. But now, he’s just as gray as everything else and he’s too tired to hold back his anger. “It’s always up to me, isn’t it? Even if it’s you that’s so scared—”

“I know,” you say. You pour cereal. You should eat. Even if you aren’t hungry, Phil would usually say, _eat._ So, you imagine that’s what he’s saying now, instead of what he really is.

“Dan. Dan, don’t ignore me,” Phil says.

“I’m not.”

“So, that’s it?” Phil says. He walks up to you, takes the bowl out of your hands, and gets close. “Like this, forever? You getting scared and shutting down and me having to clean it all up?”

Usually, Phil wouldn’t say those things. You both had talked about it before and Phil was always understanding. If you’re having a bad day, Phil would bring you a glass of water and leave you be. He’d never hold it against you, even if you deserved it.

“I don’t mean to shut down.” If you were normal, and could control your racing thoughts and useless body, Phil wouldn’t have to now. It’s a wonder he hadn’t broken earlier. “You _know_ I don’t mean—”

“You don’t mean anything,” Phil says. “I don’t _care_ what they say about me, but you seem to care so much.”

“Phil.” He’s getting close to your face and you can’t turn away.

“Why is being what we are so bad?”

“You didn’t have to—”

“You think it wasn’t the same for me?” Phil says. “That people didn’t bully me, or say the same awful things? I know it was hard for you, Dan, but you know it’s a problem with them, not you.”

“It wasn’t the same for us,” you say, even if you aren’t so sure. But the thoughts that blossom in your mind when you go down that path are always the same. If it _was_ the same, and if Phil had suffered the same, then why are you the only one who was broken? What is so utterly wrong with you that you couldn’t handle it?

“At least it’s the same for us now,” Phil says, holding out his hands. _Look around,_ his gesture says. _We’re here together._

“It’s not.”

“Oh?” Phil says. He’s way too close. Normally it’s fine, you are all over each other in comfort and in jest, but now it feels like a threat. Your heart beats faster and you hate that Phil’s body near yours can feel like fear. “What’s so different, then?”

“Last time it was this bad—” you start, but it’s too quiet for Phil to hear.

He leans in closer and your throat closes up. “What?”

“Last time it was this bad,” you say, louder. You finally meet Phil’s eyes. “I tried to kill myself. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? You’re too perfect for that. That’s why it can never be the same.”

He’s stunned. And in that moment where he’s still trying to collect himself, you push past him and lock yourself in your room. Phil knocks and knocks at your door, rattling the doorknob, trying to get in. You hear him say your name, plead with you from the hall, but you say nothing back.

Finally, you can hear the fear in his voice too. It doesn't feel like a victory. 

**2013**

The problem is, words can be weapons even if you don’t mean them to be. Because Phil would be worried no matter how he found out. Whether that fear is founded in a present reality, or one transposed across timelines to a younger self, it doesn’t matter. Just that the worry itself is a very real thing that makes you both into puppets.

Age is perhaps a reality that makes Phil more capable of a heavier sort of worry, though. One that has hardened with disease and death and a knowledge of what forever truly means. He doesn’t say it to you, but you can tell. Knowing himself and knowing you, he would understand the meaning of your words more than he could before. If you had told him back then. (When? The first time? The second time? Every time you had it in your mind to, but couldn’t?) 

If you didn’t tell him in anger, you wouldn’t have in sadness. But depression isn’t sadness or anger in itself, sometimes it just _is._ It exists on its own timeline, its own plane, devouring everything else and becoming the only thing that has meaning, in the end. In the beginning. Now, and forever.

That, at least, is what it feels like.

One of those days you can’t get out of bed for the third day in a row (or, fourth?) Phil brings you another glass of water and some toast to eat. He begs you to eat. You try, for him. For him.

It’s been bad for a while, but Phil doesn’t say that. Instead, when you leave the toast half-finished and turn back over in bed, he says, “you’d let me know if there’s anything I can do, right?”

You don’t say anything because what is there to say? You can’t even imagine what could make this better because it is the only thing in your world.

“You wouldn’t—” Phil catches himself, tries again. “If you thought about hurting yourself, you’d tell me? Please?”

You blink at that. He’d never said that before, not in so many words. And in reality, no matter how much this feels likes forever, you’d never think of death as a way of escaping it. Because of him. You’d never do that to him.

“I wouldn’t do that again,” you say. You only realize what you said after you feel Phil freeze against your back, hand tightening on your shoulder.

“You—you wanted to—” Phil stammers. He puts his head against your neck. “How do you know you wouldn’t? I don’t know if you’ll get out of bed every day and it makes me—oh, god, Dan. I can’t stand it.”

You want to feel bad. Intellectually, you do. It’s the same core to the feeling that makes you sure you’d never off yourself now. But actually savoring the pain or letting tears fall? It can't happen right now. “Phil,” you say.

“Do you know how much this hurts me?” Phil says. “I can’t stand going out for—for groceries or to visit my parents without thinking—worrying that you could have done something—something you can’t take back.”

You turn over and look at him. Your Phil, red-eyed, chest heaving over sobs. You touch his cheek and know that this is a sort of low you can’t dig yourself out of by yourself.

“I know,” you say. It takes all your effort, but you say it. “I won’t hurt myself.”

“How can I know that?” Phil says. "You can't, Dan. You can't know that." 

"What can I do to convince you?" you ask.

"Go get help," he says. "Like I've been telling you to. Please. For me." 

**2015**

It could have happened in a bad way. Or a happy way. Or any other way in between. Forgotten words trampled over in a flurry of excitement or careful, deliberate, ones whispered between pillows late at night. It isn’t romantic, though. It isn’t just another story. It’s both part of you and something so far from who you are now that it feels like it shouldn’t be said out loud. Because your mouth making those sounds would be like owning that self again.

Though that is part of the point, you think.

Therapy helps. You learn to talk. Learn to write, which is better. Letters to yourself and others you’ve wronged over the years because of things you’ve said and hadn’t been able to take back. Your jealousy or your fear winning out over your need to please. Both, you are reminded again and again, are things to balance. Not good or bad. Just feelings that make you aware of your surroundings. 

_I fear not being able to control what they know,_ you write in a letter to yourself. _I’m sorry that I took out my fear on you,_ you write to Phil.

When Phil asks you about some of the things you are still scared of, you decide it’s better to write it in a letter. Because then, it is still you saying it, but a careful and more articulate you. One that can’t lie in the heat of the moment, stepping back from the sheer edge of a cliff because you can’t take those words back. Swallow them whole and think that if they aren’t said, they can’t be true.

_When I was young, before I met you, I thought the world was never going to change. I thought my world would never be bigger than a town that hated me for a thing I didn’t have control over. Before I met you, I wanted my world to end, and I’m still scared that if I don’t have you now, I’d want that again. But I’m learning to love myself in a way that is separate from loving you. I hope that someday, that fear will go away because I never want to make you feel like loving me is the only way to keep me safe._

**2017**

You may have written that letter, you may have not. Even if you had written that letter on the tube back from a therapy appointment, you may not have given it to Phil. You may have kept it in a back drawer, knowing that it would be more helpful to you than a burden to Phil. 

Even so, the knowledge of that growth still stands. You find yourself. You decide not to give up on yourself. It feels good—not perfect, but good. Safe on the sturdiness of your own two feet.

You spend weeks packing up memories for a move across London that has been a long time coming. You laugh with Phil looking at stupid things you both bought for videos or horrible fashion choices that should have been thrown away years ago. Some you keep, some you toss, most are packed into boxes that stack higher and higher.

After a hard day of loading and carrying and unloading and sorting, you and Phil lie down, exhausted, on the floor of your new flat. It’s more than you’d ever hoped for when you were so young and imagining independence in a new city. It has light and space and you have the money to decorate it how you want. A life built, box by box, with him.

“I never thought I’d make it this far,” you say.

Phil laughs. “The stairs really got you, huh bub?”

When you don’t say anything back, Phil turns to his side, elbow down so he can look over to where you’re sniffling at the ceiling. You're tired. He’s tired. But the tears are real. He knows.

Phil pulls you up and into his arms and walks you over to the couch. It’s one of the few things you unpacked enough to use and you thank your morning-self that had the mind to plan it like this. Phil curls up next to you and flips open his laptop. You watch anime together until you fall asleep in each other’s arms. It feels like home, but not yet forever. 

**2019**

You watch Phil watch you on the computer open on his lap. You watch his face, knowing each beat and pause of the video you’d spent the last two weeks editing and the last year planning. You can see each flicker of a smile and laugh and frown that crosses your love’s face and can match it perfectly to the line of the script.

You know when he gets to it. You know exactly what he’ll do as well. His breath hitches, his lips tighten, and he pauses the video. He glances up at you and you look back, trying to convey more in that look than you possibly can. Because right now, it isn’t you that needs to be comforted. You’ve had weeks, listening to yourself over and over again the words don’t mean much alone anymore. It’s his reaction that digs at your heart.

“I’m sorry it took so long to say it,” you say. “To say—anything. For fuck’s sake, I needed to email my family to come out. Of course, I was so chicken I had to—to say _that_ —to you in a video.”

Phil puts the computer to the side and grabs your hand. He kisses each knuckle separately, deliberately, taking his time.

“You’ve told me before,” he says. “In so many ways. I hate to hear it, but it isn’t the first time.” He takes your other hand, kisses each knuckle there as well. “But thank you for telling me, in all your ways. It isn’t easy.”

* * *

The thing is, it is both true and not that it was the first time you’d told anyone. Phil was always the exception, in more ways than one. You and he were _we_ for so long that saying _anything_ meant saying something outside the little circle that you had made, together. That, and you never had to use so many words with him. Your fear, your anger, your jealousy, and your love were all the ways you gave him every piece of yourself.

It happened in many more ways than you'd hoped, but fewer ways than you’d planned.

And in the end, he already knew he loved all of you. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dieofthatroar on tumblr, come say hi!


End file.
